


raw

by narrativefoiltrope



Series: a poem in your mouth [5]
Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: Emotional Hurt, Established Relationship, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Kissing, Mortality, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:46:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28066458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narrativefoiltrope/pseuds/narrativefoiltrope
Summary: from a kiss prompt: a sad/crying kiss, featuring established relationship (i.e. married for 25 years) mason and detective winter collins, attempting to navigate rebecca's death in the face of winter's own mortality.
Relationships: Detective/Mason (The Wayhaven Chronicles), Female Detective/Mason (The Wayhaven Chronicles)
Series: a poem in your mouth [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2009533
Comments: 5
Kudos: 11





	raw

The bathroom mirror is not kind to her tonight. 

It reflects back every year etched into her face, all 53 of them highlighted in the crow’s-feet around her eyes, the smile lines around her mouth. Winter does not always notice these marks of ageing, but tonight they are all she can notice. She feels ill and braces her arms on either side of the sink. 

They had laid Rebecca to rest this afternoon.

Her mother’s death had not been unexpected: The cancer was quick and merciless, but they still had had a month to prepare. To get Rebecca’s affairs in order, to explain to their sons that their grandmother’s time was limited, and to attempt to make peace with losing Rebecca before it was a reality. 

Yet all those attempted emotional buffers had not mattered at the gravesite.

Winter did not cry at her mother’s funeral. She had fully expected to—they were close and had only grown closer since she began working with Unit Bravo decades ago—but Winter had been too busy cataloguing everyone’s reactions, comforting where necessary, to pay attention to her own grief in the moment. 

Unit Bravo was shattered. She watched as a well-worn but now long unfamiliar mask of stoicism settled on Adam’s face. She saw how Nate tried to take care of everyone around him despite the pain clear in his eyes. She bore witness to Felix trying to process this loss—the second mother he’d lost—as death was still so new to him, so raw and inexplicable. 

Her chest physically ached as she watched her sons navigate grief for the first time. Alexander, a tumultuous but loving 15-year-old, resorted to anger, coiled like a spring in a posture reminiscent of his father, while his quiet younger brother, Theo, cried silently next to him and held his hand. 

But worst of all was watching Mason. Winter could tell he had been trying his hardest not to react in front of her—had been trying since they received the news—but she caught the muscle jumping in his jaw, a tightness in his eyes, and knew that he was affected. 

That he was mourning for Rebecca of course, but that he was also inevitably thinking about what it would be like to mourn for the younger of the Collins women. 

Winter tries to stop that line of thought. She turns her attention back to the mirror to take off her makeup. 

She quickly realises this is a mistake.

After each pass of the makeup removing wipe, she notices new—old—lines carved into her face, new— _old_ —patches of skin that have lost their elasticity, the heavy circles under her eyes that seem to add ten years to her appearance tonight. 

It’s too much. 

For perhaps the first time in the 15 years since she decided to remain mortal, she regrets her decision. Or rather—not regrets, but feels the selfishness of. It was one thing for her to make such a decision when she was relatively young—when death was more of an abstract concept than a looming certainty—but now? Now when she has a family that will miss her? Now when she knows—has felt, _is feeling_ —the dull, overwhelming grief of losing her own mother? How can she go through with this? How can she leave them and let them feel as empty and as broken as she feels now? 

How can she leave him to feel like this for eternity when she’s not sure if she can handle this feeling for another minute? 

It’s far too late to change her mind—they’d discussed that possibility five years ago—and she wouldn’t, but for the first time, she is bowled over by the emotional ramifications of that decision. In this moment, she hates herself for making it; for hurting him when she doesn’t have to.

She misses her mother.

Hot tears prick the back of her eyes and she feels them coat the back of her throat. She watches her face grow red and blotchy in the mirror. 

She can’t look at herself anymore. 

Acutely aware of Mason in their adjoining bedroom, Winter roughly grabs a hand towel, steps away from the sink, and sinks to the floor. She shoves her face into the towel in a desperate and futile attempt to muffle her sobs, which come ripping out of her mouth with a force that borders on violence. It’s too hard for even her torso to stay upright so she stops fighting gravity, lets herself collapse on her side as the anguish works its way out through her mouth, her nose, her eyes. 

She hears Mason yank open the bathroom door and then feels him sink down next to her. He wordlessly gathers her into his arms and holds her tightly. A warm, heavy hand runs over her hair in a repetitive motion that reminds her of her childhood and she cries harder, clutches at his shirt. Mason holds her tighter.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m _so_ sorry, I’m sorry,” Winter croaks out, a broken record stuck on an open wound.

Mason stiffens. She knows that he knows what she is trying to apologise for, and she knows he isn’t going to accept her apologies—even before he places a finger under her chin and tilts her head up to look at him. 

His eyes are fierce when she does, a familiar storm that somehow seems to anchor her instead of pushing her further adrift. “You have nothing to apologise for—do you hear me?”

Winter wants to argue but she knows it would be a losing battle with casualties on both sides; knows that to do so would hurt him as much as it hurts her. Her choice is one they have accepted, but that doesn’t mean it is any less painful. So she nods.

“Use your words, sweetheart.” 

She draws in a shaky breath. “I… I hear you.”

He searches her eyes with a narrowed gaze before he moves to cradle her face in both hands. He kisses the tear tracks there, his thumbs rubbing gently back and forth in the hollows under her cheekbones. 

Mason places a final kiss on her forehead as he scoops her up—not over his shoulder this time, but cradled against his chest—and carries her to their bed. As he helps her under the covers, he murmurs again, “Nothing to apologise for.”

He isn’t lying, though she still disagrees.

**Author's Note:**

> you may see a reworked version of this (from mason's perspective) as part of "the end of all things," the series in which i explore what winter's mortality looks like for mason and for their relationship. the conversation alluded to here is one that ejunkiet wrote about in "and I know it well"--go give it a read, it's a beautiful heartbreaking piece!


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